The Furys

The Furys Saga #1

by James Hanley

Although admired by fellow writers like E. M. Forster, Henry Green and William Faulkner and winning comparisons with Joseph Conrad and Dostoyevsky, James Hanley is not as well known as he should be. Without doubt, he was one of the major British writers of the twentieth-century. Faber Finds is proud to be reissuing his Furys saga, making all five novels available for the first time. Before writing The Furys, James Hanley outlined his plan to his 'I want to show the downfall of a whole family excepting one, and that is the woman. That woman is heroic, powerful, exercises a tremendous influence over her family. I shall show her under every light. I cannot attempt to describe in detail the amazing lives of these people, sometimes fantastic, but never, never divorced from reality. Working class lives are full of colour, of poetry, there is the stuff of drama in the most insignificant things.' The Furys, the first in the sequence, is set in Liverpool, renamed Gelton, in 1911. Set during the 'Great Liverpool Transport Strike', it centres upon a decisive moment in the lives of the Fury family. Fanny Fury has pinned all her frustrated hopes on her youngest son, Peter. Struggling against poverty and family resentment, she sends Peter to train for the priesthood. Seven years later, and in disgrace, he returns home to face her pain and rage. 'It's great ... I really think it is different in quality, texture, atmosphere, view-point, art and purpose from any other book I know. It's a wonderful thing to have done...The character of the mother is a masterpiece, and so - only second to her - is Mr Fury. I never recall reading of the mysterious and involved link between married people so profoundly and touchingly portrayed.' John Cowper Powys

Genres: Classics, Fiction

396 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1935

About the author

Born in Kirkdale, Liverpool, in 1897 (not Dublin, nor 1901 as he generally implied) to a working-class family, Hanley probably left school in 1911 and worked as a clerk, before going to sea in 1915 at the age of 17 (not 13 as he again implied). Thus life at sea was a formative influence and much of his early writing is about seamen.
Then, in April 1917, Hanley jumped ship in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, and shortly thereafter joined the Canadian Army in Fredericton, NB. Hanley fought in France in the summer of 1918, but was invalided out shortly thereafter. He then went to Toronto, Canada, for two months, in the winter of 1919, to be demobbed, before returning to Liverpool on 28 March 1919. He may have taken one final voyage before working as a railway porter in Bootle. In addition to working as a railway porter, he devoted himself "to a prodiguous range of autodidactic, high cultural activities – learning the piano ...attending ... concerts ... reading voraciously and, above all, writing." It is also probable that he later worked at a number of other jobs, while writing fiction in his spare time. However, it was not until 1929 that his novel Drift was accepted, and this was published in March, 1930.

Reviews

[El · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a nice little gem I found in the clearance section of the bookstore recently. I had never heard of James Hanley, and I certainly had not heard of The Furys, but figure one can rarely go wrong for a buck or two.

The Furys is a working class family with little to provide. Fanny Fury, wife and mother, holds everything together in the best way she knows how, keeping up the house and caring for her elderly and sick father as well. She has one glimmer of hope in her life, and that's her youngest son, Peter. He was sent off seven years ago to become a priest, but the story opens with the news that he is coming home... having failed at becoming a priest. Fanny's heart is broken, but she also has the additional news that her other son has been hurt in a shipping accident.

As her family comes back together we see just how much they have been torn apart before the story starts. The name, the Furys, is appropriate to their character as a whole - each member of the family is angry in some way, and the emotion is expressed in a variety of manners, all resulting in plenty of melodrama and violence. (The latter to a surprising degree considering the book was published in 1935.)

I enjoyed the first part of the book better, going through the day-to-day routine of Fanny, living life through her mind. The story fell apart a bit for me towards the middle, but not enough to prevent me from reading. It appears this is the first in a series of semi-autobiographical novels by Hanley, though it also appears that the other books are difficult to find. I'm a pro at inadvertently finding the first book in what turns out to be a series, and then not being able to easily find the rest. But these are the sorts of things that keep me going in life.

This first installment ends on a bit of a cliff-hanger, with Fanny at her most angry, and I totally need to know what happens now.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having heard quite nothing about this novel I picked it up and I was pleasantly surprised at some of the great moments in the novel from the struggles of Mrs Fury and the family's poverty, the strike and riots of gelton and the Grandfathers trapped memories which are all wonderfully described. The book however does go into somewhat over the top detail at times, slowing down the novel.